Railway catenary tension force monitoring via the analysis of wave propagation in cables

Abstract

<jats:p> The tensioning forces applied to the contact wire in a railway catenary system influence the performance of the line. In this paper, a method to monitor the status of such tensioning forces is proposed based on the dependency that the waves that propagate through a tensioned wire have on the forces that pull the wire itself. A novel analytical formulation for the propagation of waves in a tensioned wire was proposed, and it was used to obtain the vertical acceleration of the wire when an external force acts as a concentrated input. The analysis of the acceleration with a moving standard deviation allowed a method to be defined for the generation of an index that describes the trend of the tensioning forces. The method was then tested on the wire accelerations obtained with laboratory tests and, afterwards, on the accelerations recorded on a contact wire of an electric railway regularly in operation and excited with the same kind of input. </jats:p>

Railway Catenary Condition Monitoring: A Systematic Mapping of Recent Research

“…The accelerometer is the second most popular sensor type, contributing 18.2%, and it has shown a relatively even distribution through the years from 1989 to 2022 [88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101]. Most studies use accelerometers to obtain the pan-head acceleration, which can determine the catenary's health condition through certain algorithms, such as those presented in [13,15].…”

Vibration Measurement and Wave Reflection Analysis in an Electrified Railway Catenary Based on Analytical Methods

“…The experimental setup of the single CW vibration test performed in the laboratory is presented in Fig. 5, in which a standard CW is used as the test object, with the ends of CW fixed [30]. Two fabricated wireless sensors are attached to the wire [20] and work as response collectors and lumped masses.…”

“…For Equation (30), the wave components arriving at the observation site at different times can be obtained using different  values. Note that the time differences between the wave components are mainly caused by the differences in the traveling speed and distance of the waves.…”

“…Further, the noncontact methods based on photogrammetric devices have been established to measure the catenary uplift without interrupting the railway operation [28,29]. In our previous publications, both the contact-type [30] and noncontact methods [31] have been developed for catenary dynamic behavior measurements. And the work in this paper can be regarded as a follow-up research on our previous work in [30] and [31].…”

“…In our previous publications, both the contact-type [30] and noncontact methods [31] have been developed for catenary dynamic behavior measurements. And the work in this paper can be regarded as a follow-up research on our previous work in [30] and [31].…”